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[[Category:New Reviews|Short Stories]]
[[Category:Short Stories|*]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->
{{newreview
|author= Helen Stancey
|title= The Madonna of the Pool
|rating= 3.5
|genre= Short Stories
|summary= In most short story collections, an overarching theme is usually present in each of the narratives which help each story gently flow in to the next. In this debut collection Helen Stancey explores the quiet disappointments, achievements, and complications that each of us experience through everyday life. She draws attention to the small events and decisions that can both disrupt and significantly alter the lives of others and ourselves, all while maintaining a delicately poetic tone throughout.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1912054000</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Joanna Walsh
|summary=What are we to make of that subtitle-seeming writing on the front cover – ''stories you can't unread''? Does that not apply to all good fiction? Clearly it is here due to the reputation of the author, and the baggage his name brings to the page. We'd expect a dramatic approach from anything Palahniuk writes, and an added frisson, an extra layer, from which we might be forced to shrink back. But a lot of the contents don't quite go that far. Yes, things are dramatic, when society starts attaching defibrillators to itself, to create the perfect, simple, care- (''The Price is Right''-, and Kardashian-) free happiness. A man buys a horse for his daughter – but boy is it the wrong horse to buy. A man falls in love – yes, sometimes the plot summaries of these stories really are better off for being short (speaking of which, don't turn to the three-page entrant here as a taster, it'll put you off by dint of being, almost uniquely here, a nothing story). A call centre worker can't convince people he's on the level and even in their country – until someone starts riffing back to him. A housing estate report conveys bad regulation violations, but not as bad as the happenings at a 'Burning Man'-styled festival, in a very clever couple of tales. But many too are the instances where that extra step has been taken.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099587688</amazonuk>
}}
